When two young Mormon missionaries knocked on performer Julia Sweeney's door one day, it puts Sweeney on a quest to completely rethink her own beliefs.

About Julia Sweeney

Julia Sweeney is an actor and writer best known for her four-year run on Saturday Night Live and her solo shows. Her recent piece, Letting Go of God, traces a spiritual journey that takes an unexpected turn toward science and ends with atheism.

Her book, If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother, is about parenting and being parented. She performs regularly with Jill Sobule, telling stories alongside Jill's songs, in their "Jill and Julia Show."

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GUY RAZ, HOST:

So what if everyone we've heard from on the show today is right? Like, what if there is only your truth? Which is what Devdutt Pattanaik believes.

DEVDUTT PATTANAIK: My truth is my truth. Your truth is your truth. And 6 billion people on this planet have 6 billion truths. And you believe your truth is the true. I believe my truth is the truth and that's why we argue.

RAZ: Devdutt writes about Hinduism, particularly about Hindu mythology, but he's also really interested in universal myths and truths and why people argue about them. Here's how he starts his TED Talk.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

PATTANAIK: Their world is objective, logical, universal, factual, scientific. My world is subjective. It's emotional. It's personal. It's perceptions, thoughts, feelings, dreams. It is the belief system that we carry. It's the myths that we live in. Their world tells us how the world functions, how the sun rises, how we are born. My world tells us why the sun rises, why were we born.

RAZ: So I want to ask you about belief.

PATTANAIK: OK.

RAZ: I mean, what do you think it is about belief or faith that people seem to need?

PATTANAIK: Well, you see, if you look at nature, there is the animal, which is a predator, which is constantly looking for food. And it's restless and frightened and that's hunger. And then there are animals which are prey, which are constantly seeking protection and security because, otherwise, a predator will eat them. So that's fear. And then the human beings come along and we imagine a world without hunger. And we imagine a world without fear. And we also imagine the opposite - a world with absolute terrible hunger and absolute terrible fear. The former, the world without hunger and fear, we call Heaven. And the world full of infinite hunger and fear we call Hell. And we are wondering how do we avoid Hell and go towards Heaven. And we are looking for answers everywhere. And someone comes along and tells us something and we say, hey, that will take me to heaven. And that's faith.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

PATTANAIK: This understanding of our ancestors is transmitted generation from generation in the form of stories, symbols and rituals, which are always indifferent to rationality. And so when you study it, you realize that different people of the world have a different understanding of the world. There is my world and there is your world. And my world is always better than your world because my world, you see, is rational and yours is superstition. Yours is faith. Yours is illogical. This is the root of the clash of civilizations.

RAZ: I was really interested in the story you told in your talk about Alexander the Great and the completely different perspectives on it, like, from the Hindu perspective and from the Greek perspective.

PATTANAIK: Yes. The story goes that Alexander met a person in India called a Gymnosophist, which is basically means a naked wise man. And he asked the Gymnosophist, who was doing - sitting on a rock doing nothing, just staring at the sky. And Alexander asked him, so what are you doing?

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

PATTANAIK: What are you doing? And the Gymnosophist answered, I'm experiencing nothingness. Then the Gymnosophist asked, what are you doing? And Alexander said, I am conquering the world. And they both laughed. Each one thought the other was a fool. Gymnosophist said, why is he conquering the world? It's pointless. And Alexander thought, why is he sitting around doing nothing? What a waste of a life.

And the two people looked at the same situation very differently because each of them believed it different things. Alexander believed you live only once. All his life as a child, he read stories of heroes who do something spectacular and because they do something spectacular they land up in a place called Elysium - Heaven of heroes. And he wanted to be one of them. So he worked all his life trying to be a great man, but that's not the story the Gymnosophist heard.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

PATTANAIK: He heard a very different story. You see, the Indians also had a river that separates the land of the living from the land of the dead, but you don't cross it once. You go to and fro endlessly because you see nothing last forever in India, not even death. The same life is lived infinite times till you get the point of it all. Groundhog's day. Two different mythologies. Two different ways of looking at the world. One believes this is the one and only life. The other believes this is one of many lives.

RAZ: People must ask you all the time who's right?

PATTANAIK: Yes they do and I say you decide. It's your decision. You are the judge.

RAZ: I guess I'd rather live, you know, multiple lives than just one. Right, less pressure in some ways.

PATTANAIK: There is less pressure, but, you see, it also makes you inefficient, it makes you lackadaisical, lazy. You just sort of hang around waiting for the world to change. So if you want to save the world, you need one life.

RAZ: Do you think more people would identify with the Gymnosophist or with Alexander?

PATTANAIK: The simple answer is when things are going right for you, think of yourself as Alexander. You've achieved success. If things are not going so well, your relationships are breaking down and, you know, life just sucks, then you say, hey I'm the Gymnosophist. This shall not last forever. A new life will come along and everything will change. And you're happy.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

PATTANAIK: And if you look at cultures around the world, all you have to do is understand the mythology and you will see how they behave and how they do business. If you live only once - in one-life cultures around the world, you will see an obsession with binary logic, absolute truth, standardization, absoluteness, linear patterns in design. But if you look at cultures which have cyclical and based on infinite lives, you will see comfort with fuzzy logic, with contextual thinking, with everything is relative, sort of - mostly. Just look at your Indian people around here, you'll see them smile. They know what it is. And then look at people who have done business in India. You'll see the exasperation on their faces.

(APPLAUSE)

PATTANAIK: There will always be people who believe in one life. And there will always be people who believe in many lives.

RAZ: What's your truth?

PATTANAIK: That everybody has a right to their truth.

RAZ: What about yours?

PATTANAIK: It is that nothing in this world is permanent, nothing is perfect, everything is transforming all the time.

RAZ: You believe this...

PATTANAIK: Yes I do.

RAZ: ...With all of your heart and soul?

PATTANAIK: Well, every time I look into the mirror, I see I'm growing older so there it is. My hairs are going gray. My skin is wrinkling. The trees are falling. People are changing all the time. That never changes.

(SOUNDBITE OF TED TALK)

PATTANAIK: And so the next time you meet someone, a stranger - one request. Understand that you live in the subjective truth and so does he. Understand it. And when you understand it, you will discover something spectacular. You will discover that within infinite myths lies the eternal truth. Who sees it all? Varuna has but a thousand eyes. Indra, a hundred. You and I, only two. Thank you. Namaste.

(APPLAUSE)

RAZ: Devdutt Pattanaik. He's written more than a dozen books on Hindu mythology. You can see his entire TED Talk at TED.com.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PRAISE YOU")

FATBOY SLIM: (Singing) We've come a long, long way together through the hard times and good. I have to celebrate you, baby. I have to praise you like I should.

RAZ: Hey, thanks for listening to our show on believers and doubters this week. If you missed any of it or if you want to hear more or you want to find out more about who was on it, you can visit TED.NPR.org. You can also find many more TED Talks at TED.com and you can download this program through iTunes or through the NPR smartphone app. I'm Guy Raz. You've been listening to ideas worth spreading here on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.